CRN Storage News

With all the talk about whether Dell can handle the overlap between its Compellent storage and EMC's VNX, it's easy to forget that Dell has been successfully managing multiple overlapping storage lines for years.

Last week's announcement that data storage giant EMC will be acquired by Dell triggers the change-in-control clauses in the employment agreements of EMC's six top "named executives," resulting in big paydays for key players if they leave the company.

Dell's announcement to buy storage giant EMC $67 billion solidifies the largest deal in the history of the IT business, creating in its wake a channel behemoth set to dominate the enterprise IT market.

Being acquired by Dell would likely dissolve EMC's reselling agreement with Lenovo and force the PC giant to find new paths into the data center market, analysts say, perhaps by partnering more closely with IBM or acquiring IBM's storage business.

A top EMC executive tells CRN that EMC's Cisco relationship and key parts of the EMC Federation are likely to survive because of the importance of customer choice, and that talk of a culture clash is premature.

The new training and services, revealed at this year's NetApp Insight program, are aimed at helping partners find better ways to bring customers to hybrid platforms, where the same data is addressed seamlessly on-premises and in public or private clouds.

While share prices dropped slightly below the final pre-IPO price of $17 per share, Pure Storage, now with a $3-billion-plus valuation, can turn its focus to competing against a host of startups and legacy vendors.